Swimming Through Snow
by 2K
Summary: On a morning in July two years after they go into hiding to escape MacPherson, someone knocks on their door saying they're needed back because Mrs F has been kidnapped. Also, they can't figure out why it's snowing. Spoilers for s1 finale.
1. Swimming Through Snow

**Title**: Swimming Through Snow  
**Author**: "dodo31" on LJ, "2k" on ff.n  
**Rating**: K+  
**Characters**: Claudia, Pete, Juliet O'Hara (Psych), Artie, Bodyguard. Undertone of Cladia/Artie.  
**Spoilers**: Warehouse 13: Everything through MacPherson, goes AU about a minute before the episode ends. Psych: AU after Psy vs. Psy.  
**Summary**: On a morning in July, two years after they go into hiding to escape MacPherson, someone knocks on their door.

**Notes**: Cracky sort-of-crossover with Pysch that sprouted in my head like a weed while I was really bored in my 8 am Anatomy & Physiology lecture. Originally I was reluctant to post this because I'm so out of practice with writing longer pieces, but it won my heart over. I have plans for more in this little universe, but I'm not going to make any promises in case someone actually likes it and wants a sequel and I don't manage to follow through. Crossover is so minor that putting it in the "crossover" section would only serve to disappoint the Psych fans.

--

The knock on the door comes as a complete surprise to Claudia. They'd purposefully chosen a house 20 miles down a dirt road that was itself more than five miles from the limits of the nearest village. The only people who knocked on their door were really, really lost hikers and the occasional neighbor that wanted to argue about which side of the property line a tree would fall on.

"Claudia Patterson?" asks a sharply dressed woman when Claudia swings open the green wooden door, leaving the screen door in place. She's blonde and pretty, light colored eyes shining from a pale face. To her right stands Pete Lattimer, which is probably one of the biggest shocks she'll receive this decade. He looks exactly like she remembers, muscles and short brown hair, and when she focuses on his face and sees him looking back at her she's struck with something that feels a bit like home.

Except he looks at her as if he doesn't see her, or perhaps doesn't _want _to see her, and the words out of his mouth are as informal as she's ever heard him direct towards her since she first began working at the Warehouse. "I'm Agent Lattimer and this is Agent O'Hara. We're with the Secret Service and we have a few questions for your husband."

They flash her their badges and ID and Claudia finds herself with no choice but to prop open the screen door and invite them in out of the rain. "He called me a few minutes ago, saying he was on his way back from town. Want some coffee and cookies while you wait?"

Pete's response is an enthusiastic yes please, and O'Hara is either better or worse at dealing with him than Myka was because she doesn't even try to argue.

As they make their way to the kitchen she sees the Agents scoping out her front hall and living room. The décor is eclectic and vaguely steampunk; Claudia sometimes jokes about how it's like the Warehouse had a baby with the B&B and abandoned it to raise itself in the middle of the woods. A few inconspicuous artifacts dot the bookshelves that line nearly every wall, something no one but she and Artie and maybe Pete or Myka would notice. Vaguely, she wishes that she'd had the foresight to put them away but writes the thought off as too irrational.

--

"You met your husband while attending the University of California, Irvine, right?" Agent O'Hara asks as Claudia hands her a blue ceramic plate with two fresh oatmeal raisin cookies on it. They're all already holding mugs of the coffee she'd put on in anticipation of Artie's return.

"Yup," she says, putting more cookies on another plate for Pete. "But I thought your questions were for Artie?" Their meeting at UCI had been part of the cover story Mrs. Frederic had cooked up for them. A professor and his undergraduate physics student falling in love and moving across the country to get away from public derision they had faced. At the time they'd laughed and been appropriately awkward about it and, though the idea of their marriage had become more and more truthful over the past two years, she still found the thought of discussing it with Pete about as comfortable as she imagined sticking her hand into a fire might be.

"It's just personal interest," the Agent says, and Claudia's pretty sure it's not. "I grew up in Irvine and was a cop in Santa Barbara for years. It's nice to see someone else from SoCal this far East."

"That's where you worked with that... psychic, right?" Pete asks, and she finds herself listening to the two Agents start bicker about someone named Spencer who may or may not be an actual psychic. Pete still won't look at her as if he's seeing anyone but a stranger.

--

Twenty minutes later, Claudia is trying to convince the coffee machine that it wants to brew another pot. It's aging and temperamental, the least modern thing in their white-walled kitchen, and she's about ready to give up when the bang of the front door slamming shut announces Artie's arrival.

To his credit, not that he could rise much higher in Claudia's esteem, he doesn't look surprised when he ses the federal Agents standing in their kitchen.

"Make the house clean enough," he says, making eye contact with Pete, the phrase sounding like a question he doesn't really want to know the answer to.

O'Hara looks between the two men as if they've grown extra heads. Claudia knows exactly what's going on but half wishes she didn't: She likes secret phrases and code words as much as the next incredibly intelligent young woman, but knowing that what's said next will determine if this is a life or death situation or just a social call kind of takes the fun out of it.

"And earn a bag of wooden nickels," Pete says, still seated even though O'Hara has risen to her feet, and the creeping feeling of dread that had wormed its way into the pit of her stomach explodes into full-fledged worry. "We need your help, Artie."

There were three different phrases he could have responded with, and that's by far the worst possibility. It means that someone's been taken or killed by MacPherson, and since Pete's standing here without Myka she can guess who the someone is.

"Myka's at the Warehouse with Joshua, holding down the fort," he says as if he's reading Claudia's mind.

"Then who--" Artie begins, and Claudia barely gets her mouth open before they're cut off by O'Hara. She's gone from seeming a bit confused to looking visibly angry, fists delicately balled up at her sides as she breathes deeply.

"Care to tell me what's going on, _partner_?" The emphasis makes Claudia think that they haven't been working together for long.

Pete shakes his head. "Not right now, no, _partner_." His emphasis carries the weight of someone with authority over her and she's apparently an Agent who plays by the book because she stops talking and looks a little less annoyed. "Get your coats, I've got a special flight for us out of a regional airport and it'll take us a while to get there. I'll try to explain on the way."

"Middle of July right now, Pete, we don't need coats," Claudia says but she grabs her favorite grey jacket and Artie's ancient brown duster off the hooks by the back door anyway.

--

The ride to the airport is anything but quiet, detailed briefings about the situation combined with filling in Pete's brand new partner, assigned so close to the disappearance that there wasn't time for the Warehouse tour. The twisting mountain roads themselves didn't aid the discussion, and after a few particularly sharp bends in a row, Claudia is starting to feel more than a little ill.

"Let me get this straight," O'Hara says, perched next to Claudia on the back seat of the black rental sedan. "You two are Secret Service Agents hiding from some crazy British guy who wants you dead and now he's kidnapped your-- our boss? And Agents Lattimer and Bering didn't hide with you because they couldn't force their families to go with them? And you're not regular Agents, because you work for a secret underground warehouse that collects strange objects?"

"Name's Pete, Juliet, Pete. Stop calling me Agent Lattimer, I'm not your boss." Privately, Claudia thinks the name Juliet doesn't fit her. She's lacking the foolhardiness that Shakespeare's Juliet had, but maybe that's a good thing. "And yeah, that's pretty much it. Our families were already compromised, and leaving them without protection didn't seem like a good idea."

Juliet is obviously beyond puzzled now, staring at the middle-distance between her and the dark grey back of the passenger's seat as if that square foot of air holds all the answers to her questions.

Claudia raises her hand and wiggles it a bit, as if she's in grade school and waiting for a teacher to call on her. Sometimes around people from the Warehouse she _feels_ like she's in grade school. "I'm not actually from the Secret Service. Just tech girl."

"There's nothing 'just' about you, Claudia," she hears Artie mumble from the passenger's seat and she reaches in front of Juliet to give him a hard pinch on the shoulder.

Pete laughs, surprisingly heartily for someone whisking two people out of hiding to go save their may-or-may-not-be-immortal-better-not-put-it-to-the-test boss. "So it's not just your cover story," he says, making her blush. "You're actually married. Myka's not going to believe this."

"Bet Leena won't either. Or she had Artie pegged as a cradle-robber the whole time." She intends it as a joke, but as soon as the words leave her mouth and she sees the expression on Pete's face she knows something she just said was a mistake. "What?" she asks, scooting forward on the seat to try and get a better look at him from an angle not through the rear view mirror. "What aren't you saying?"

"Leena's working for MacPherson," he says, and she feels the breath leave her lungs as if she's been sucker punched. "Has been all along, but we only realized it when she snatched Mrs. F from under our noses."

After the initial shock, Claudia's reaction is an exultant thanks to whatever higher power is out there that she wasn't the sleeper agent after all. She feels guilty for a split second before deciding that if Leena's a traitor she has no reason to not think bad of her. She's pretty mad, actually, because that's her team, her _family_ Leena's betrayed, and apart from Artie and Joshua she can't think of anyone she could possibly love more.

Joshua. That thought gets her remembering something Pete said back in the kitchen. "Joshua's at the Warehouse?"

Pete nods, expression still as grave as it had been when he was talking about Leena. "Six months ago MacPherson went after him at CERN with an artifact, the same way he went after Myka's parents. We brought him to the Warehouse to keep him safe." Claudia opens her mouth to say something else, ask for specifics, but he silences her with a look several times more mature than she remembers him capable of. "You'll see him when we get there."

Artie has turned halfway around in his seat to look at her and they exchange a glance. They've gotten good at nonverbal communication while they've been living up here; for the first month neither felt like saying much of anything. This look he gives her now tells her to count her blessings and she nods, resolving not to press the issue right now.

As it turns out, she wouldn't have had time to even if she hadn't listened to Artie. Pete turns from the winding, 2-lane highway they were following onto a smaller road, a sign at the intersection advertising an airport and a café.

--

When they reach the parking lot, Juliet follows her worried gaze to the small plane sitting on the runway, clearly visible through a chain link fence. "If it makes you feel any better, we flew in on it and arrived just fine," she says, but unsurprisingly it doesn't.

Inside, Pete and Juliet flash their badges and Mrs. Frederic's bodyguard waves them away from the small security station, taking up a corner of the green and beige room. He leads them past the check-in counter to a silver colored door that looks like it's come straight off the front of someone's garage. The small room they pass through is obviously used for storing baggage, and in three steps they're outside again, face-to-face with the tiny propellor plane.

"He wasn't with Irene when she was taken?" Artie asks Pete quietly and there's a couple seconds' pause as he tries to figure out who Irene is.

"No," he says, careful to try and avoid catching the ear of the man they're talking about even though there's probably nothing the quiet man misses. "I think he blames himself. He trusted Leena as much as the rest of us, maybe more. They had a sort of... bond." Claudia thinks he means the bump-and-grind kind of bond.

The pilot standing next to the plane is short and thin and looks at her in a way that makes her skin crawl. Artie steps in front of her, glaring at him, but that just turns the look into a lewd grin.

After that exchange, the plane ride is tense, the sound of the small plane halts conversation but the unspoken words buzz around anyway, angry hornets bouncing off the wall of the tin can they're flying in.

--

Landing in South Dakota is a shock. They emerge from above the white-grey masses of fluffy clouds into a winter wonderland. Large flakes of snow fall from the sky, sticking to the runway, and Claudia is suddenly concerned for their lives. But the skeezy pilot lands them safely and soon she's standing outside the plane shivering, grateful Pete had told them to bring their coats.

"Isn't it the middle of July?" she asks him, not thinking as she grabs Artie's hands and rubs them together with her own, trying to warm up.

Pete looks at them and laughs at the picture they must be presenting, grumbling old man with his fingers being warmed by an irritated young woman, and in his look she sees the bit of home she thought she'd glimpsed earlier as he stands in the doorway. He's looking _at_ them now, not just through.

"Mrs. F isn't all we have to worry about," he says with an enigmatic grin, and behind him Juliet and the Bodyguard are scowling at the icy ground.

"_Tell me_ you haven't been playing with the snowglobe," Claudia scolds, dragging Artie with one hand and Pete with the other towards the nearest shelter.


	2. Swimming Through Snow II

**Title**: Swimming Through Snow II  
**Author**: "dodo31" on LJ, "2k" on ff.n  
**Rating**: K+  
**Characters**: Claudia, Pete, Joshua, Artie, Juliet O'Hara (Psych), Bodyguard, Myka. Undertone of Cladia/Artie.   
**Spoilers**: Warehouse 13: Everything through MacPherson, goes AU about a minute before the episode ends. Psych: AU after Psy vs. Psy.   
**Summary**: Pete returns Claudia and Artie to the Warehouse, along with the new recruit, and the persistent mid-July snow isn't the only surprise for them there.

**AU Continuity**: Part II of the slightly cracky semi-crossover began with _Swimming Through Snow_. Posted as chapter 2 to that same story on ff.n.

**Notes**: The crossover elements are relatively minor, and no knowledge of Psych is necessary for the enjoyment of this fic. If you're completely ignorant of the fandom, the one crossed over character can easily be viewed as an OC.

I've read through it a thousand times, but I could a thousand more and still not catch whatever mistakes remain.  
Comments are awesome

--

Claudia doesn't think she'll ever forget the sight of the Warehouse as she saw it the last time. Broken and defeated, the façade had been strewn in a large cemi-circle, white-hot metal burning black spots into the dry grass. She'd seen the billowing plume of smoke from the road, over a mile away, but it hadn't even begun to prepare her for the actuality. Her first real home since before foster care, ruined by the person who had helped her get there.

Seeing it now doesn't hold any more comfort. The feeling of home she'd hoped would return does, but it's fractured and stilted and probably more a product of the people rather than the place itself. The entire front is new, bright steel reflecting the intense sunlight that's somehow coming through the thick blankets of snow. That's weird, the snow, because she's never been here in the winter and right now it's the middle of July and it really, _really_ shouldn't be snowing.

As soon as the SUV stops she leaps out and bounds to the door, choosing not to hear Pete's words of caution.

"There's something you should know!" he calls after her, but it's too late as she stops in her tracks, watching the heavy door open itself and Joshua wheel himself out.

He looks more like a comic book villain than her brother, wheelchair-bound with half his face as she remembers and the other half missing, pale-blank skin staring at her in place of half his smile.

"Claudia!" he says, and the sound is as wrong as his face is but she surges forward anyway, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Despite the new height difference he still _feels_ like her brother and that's what counts right now. It's not enough, to just have him feel like her brother, but part of her realizes that's all she'll get and far more than she had expected fourteen years ago when she thought he'd died.

She hears the crunch of footsteps behind her and familiarity tells her it's Artie. She doesn't let go of Joshua or turn around, feeling intensely selfish as she tries to keep him to herself for a moment longer.

"Nice to see you, Joshua," he says, not sounding surprised or alarmed, and she figures he actually listened to Pete. That or he can tell exactly what happened to him because of exactly what artifact, just by looking, and that is a thought that leads to others she would rather not dwell on.

"You too, Professor," her brother says, and she lets him go to see him smile with his half-mouth. "I hear you're my brother-in-law now. Nice to have you in the family." She hits him on the arm for that, not sure if he's being facetious or not, and he scowls at her. The expression is clear even on his broken face.

Pete saunters up to them, self-sure and real, and tucks his thumbs into his front pockets. "We've gotta go in and give Juliet the grand tour," he says, and for the first time since they arrived here, Claudia remembers the presence of the other woman. She's standing by the car, shivering and looking a little alarmed.

She can't blame Juliet for how irritated and confused she must be, but the expression on the bodyguard's face makes her uncomfortable. She's never seen him wear his emotions this openly before. It's obvious guilt and resignation and it worries her that it could be more because Mrs. F isn't around than the intensity of his emotions. She's had to deal with a lot of the ramifications of repressed emotions in the last two years.

"Myka's down in the Warehouse," Joshua says, "looking for some missing artifacts from the Dark Vault. We've been checking the shelves, in case they've just misplaced themselves, but..." He trails off, and no one acknowledges that this means MacPherson is probably in possession of some of the most dangerous objects imaginable.

No one except Juliet, of course, but not in the same. "How can an artifact misplace _itself_?" she asks, sounding unsure of the words she's using, and Pete half-grins. "This isn't part of what you explained to me in the car."

"You'll find out in a minute."

--

The white tunnel of bombs has been reconstructed, complete with bombs, and it makes Claudia nervous. It must make Artie nervous too, because he reaches for her hand and squeezes tight. She fights the urge to close her eyes as they pass through it, and sneaks a glance at him only to see that his gaze is on her. She forces an encouraging smile onto her face and returns his grip and soon they're in the office.

Pete and Myka had told the truth about nothing being damaged in the explosion. She hadn't been allowed to see it, the structure was too dangerous, but from the steampunk computer console on the desk to the out-of-place modern plastic chairs to the suit of armor everything is the same. Even the weird mechanical hand was sticking up from the table, holding a stack of printouts. For a second she thinks it's a bit weird that they've kept Artie's decor without Artie, but then she realizes that he himself had probably inherited it from _his_ predecessor.

"What _is_ this place?" Juliet asks, looking around as if she can't quite believe it. Claudia can relate.

"America's attic," Artie mumbles from beside her, making Pete laugh, and she doesn't know why he finds that so funny.

"Warehouse 13," says Myka from the doorway and Claudia turns towards her, startled, not having heard her enter the room. "As someone told me once, we're gatherers and protectors of secrets." _That_ makes Pete laugh, too, and she's really very sure she's missing something.

Myka looks exactly the same as she remembers, right down to the perpetually stunned expression on her face. Claudia is almost overcome with the urge to hug her, but that's what the Claudia of two years ago would have done. The Claudia of today liked to believe herself a bit more mature, so she settled on a small wave, raising her right hand to shoulder height and wiggling her fingers, saying, "Hey, Myka."

Artie squeezes her hand once more and lets go. "How much progress have you made in finding Mrs. Frederic?" he asks before any more pleasantries can be exchanged. Right down to business, and suddenly Claudia is wondering if he's as thrilled to be back as she is. It's not something they've exactly had a chance to talk about and she's kicking herself for it now, wishing she'd found a private moment where she could have asked him.

Joshua frowns at Artie's question. "In the week since Leena disappeared with her, absolutely nothing. We've spent the last three days going through their things -- the ones dark-and-broody will let us at, anyway." He clearly means this as a joke, but the expression on the bodyguard's face doesn't change from its stony mask of guilt. "The only things we were able to find were a few vague correspondences Leena had with someone, probably MacPherson."

He pauses then, the expression on his half-empty face to read, and Myka picks up where he left off.

"We thought we'd bring you back, see if you could help us," she says, and Claudia can read between the lines.

Artie obviously can, too. He masks his troubled look by glancing around the office but after the last two years living in a secluded cabin in the woods with him she knows him better than anyone else in the room has a chance to. "It wasn't an order from the Regents?"

"There may have been some hints," Pete says quickly, and puts a hand on Juliet's shoulder to steer her out the door. "Let's not keep the newbie waiting for explanations, yeah?"

"Uh-oh, quick subject change. Someone's in trouble." Claudia says it with more enthusiasm than she actually feels now that she knows they think she could still be a threat and goes with the others into the body of the Warehouse.

--

Twenty minutes later she's alone with Juliet in the dark recesses of aisle 397, the others having gone off to discuss the missing Dark Vault items and how they might relate to the kidnapping or disappearances or whatever they're calling it right now. Things are a bit more complicated than they'd been led to believe when they'd been pulled from their fake-real-new lives in New York.

It's not lost on her that this is a two-way babysitting job. She's here to make sure Juliet doesn't maim herself on an artifact, and the new recruit is here because she's the only one who's emotionally unattached enough to Claudia to not choose to ignore any hints that she might be a double agent.

"Why aren't you with the rest of them?" Juliet asks, as if she's reading her mind, and reaches out to touch a battered pillow sitting on a low, glass pedestal.

Claudia lurches forward to stop her, placing a hand on her wrist before it makes contact with the aged fabric. "Don't touch that! Never touch _anything_, at least not without gloves on," she says, and she feels a bit like Artie as she fishes a spare pair of gloves from the tool belt she'd snatched from a supply closet and hands them to Juliet. She points to the electronic marker next to the object, labeling it as H. P. Lovecraft's pillow. "That'll give you crazy tentacle nightmares forever, man."

"Sorry," she says, and Claudia doesn't quite believe her but at least she doesn't go grabbing at the pillow again. Instead, she snaps the gloves on with obvious practice and moves to run her fingers along the edge of a lacquered wooden chest.

"_Stopstopstop_!" she nearly screeches, and this time she pulls Juliet away with hands on her shoulders. "_That's_ why they left me with you, to make sure you didn't manage impregnate yourself with an evil clone." In retrospect, the Aisle Of Things That Can Make Your Life A Living Hell was probably not the best place to wander to with someone who apparently needs to touch everything.

Juliet looks a bit stunned, obviously not having expected to be manhandled like that, but recovers quickly. She shrugs off Claudia's grip and straightens her tailored suit jacket, wiggling her head from side to side a little bit and reminding Claudia a bit of a flustered kitten trying to pretend it didn't just do something really stupid with people watching.

"Come on," Claudia says, "let's go back to the office before either one of us winds up mangled by an artifact. I can introduce you to Sucky, if he's still around, and you can hear the story of how he once got me trapped in a replica of the B&B."

"_Sucky_?" Juliet scrunches her nose and tilts her head, no doubt trying to figure out whose horribly offensive nickname that was and why she hadn't met him yet.

Claudia laughs, the low sound reverberating off of several nearby objects. "Automated vacuum cleaner."

"Like a Roomba?" It sounds like both a question and a statement, a way of affirming a bit of normalcy in a world that's just gone topsy-turvy, and Claudia finds she's almost having fun throwing the pretty blonde off-balance.

"Not quite," is Claudia's reply, and it's Juliet's turn to laugh.

It still doesn't feel like the home she had a brief taste of after rescuing Joshua, but she doesn't think it ever will. Too much has changed; _she's_ changed. Part of her wants to grab Artie and run back to hide, return to their house at the end of a dirt road on the outskirts of a tiny town, living as modern-day hermits, but the part of her that's still the nineteen-year-old who forced her way into a secret government warehouse won't let her. There's work to be done, a scary ninja lady to save, and maybe a new place to make for herself in this madcap collection of people. There's also the mystery of blizzards in South Dakota in mid-July.

On the hike back to the office, Claudia talks with more enthusiasm than she feels as she tells tales of crazy warehouse hijinx. Juliet laughs where it's appropriate, and even nudges her arm a time or two, asking questions. The false enthusiasm and stiff laughs slowly turn true, and by the time they reach the steps she's wondering if there's also a new friend to be made here.


	3. Swimming Through Snow III

**Title**: Swimming Through Snow III  
**Author**: "dodo31" on LJ, "2k" on ff.n  
**Rating**: K+  
**Characters**: Claudia, Juliet O'Hara (Psych), Artie, Myka, Bodyguard, Pete, Joshua. Overtones of Artie/Claudia, slight crossover with Psych.  
**Spoilers**: Warehouse 13: Everything through MacPherson. Psych: AU after Psy vs. Psy.  
**Summary**: Claudia and Juliet have an encounter with an unpredictable artifact.  
**AU Continuity**: Part III of the slightly cracky semi-crossover began with _Swimming Through Snow_. Posted as chapter 3 to that same story on ff.n.

**Notes**: The crossover elements in this part are relatively minor, and no knowledge of Psych is necessary for the enjoyment of this fic. If you're completely ignorant of the fandom, the lone crossed over character can easily be viewed as an OC.  
This took me damn near forever to write, mostly because the one scene I really wanted to write just wouldn't form itself outside my head.

I've read through it a thousand times, but I could a thousand more and still not catch whatever mistakes remain. Please call me out on them.  
Comments are awesome.

--

A week since they began searching and there's been absolutely nothing. No news on MacPherson, no clues as to where Leena and Mrs. Frederic might be, not even a hint as to why the entire state of South Dakota and _only_ the state of South Dakota is being covered in feet of fluffy, middle-of-July snow. Claudia feels as if she's never been more bored in her entire life. Of course that's not true, there are countless things that need to be done, but it doesn't stop her from using it as an excuse to repurpose artifacts while everyone else is discussing things they don't trust her to hear.

They're all staying at the Bed and Breakfast. The sign out front proclaiming it as Leena's acts as a frequent reminder of the betrayal their work is centered around. There are only three more people here than there were when she lived here before and the B&B still has an empty room, but after years spent living in seclusion with only Artie the proximity of the others is grating. Wherever she turns there's _someone_ and she can tell it bothers the older man, too.

She spends most of her time now in the Warehouse, dragging artifacts of all shapes and sizes up to the observation deck outside the office so she can work in relative peace despite the constant hovering everyone seems to be doing. She falls asleep out here most nights, not wanting to go back to the B&B and toss and turn and disturb Artie. He hasn't been sleeping much either.

Juliet finds her as she's poking at an aircraft engine she's modified the zip line to haul up. It's spanning most of the width of the deck and Claudia is standing in the most uncomfortable position she could imagine in order to reach the part she wants, covered in sweat and oil and grease and a few other splotches of industrial gunk she's not sure she wants to try and identify. Her favorite goggles and the tacky bedazzled headlamp have been rescued from one of the never ending supply closets by Pete and she's wearing both as she attacks the engine with a small army of tools.

"Whatchya doin'?" the new agent asks, plopping down onto one of the black-painted Adirondack chairs that Leena used to favor and startling Claudia into dropping her screwdriver all the way down to the Warehouse floor.

She curses quietly as she hears the plastic of the handle shatter and watches the engine flicker into invisibility. "_Trying_ to stabilize this thing. I have an idea that may work to stop the snow but it just won't--" She smacks the block of empty space where she knows it is and yelps as she hits her purple-gloved hand a bit harder than she intended, tearing the latex and cutting open her palm. "Ugh, great. Wanna get the first aid kit for me?"

Juliet does as she's asked without any fuss, and Claudia sets herself down in the other chair to pull off the glove and survey the damage. It's a gouge in the muscle at the base of her right thumb and looks worse than it probably is. She's barely begun bearing herself for her stupidity when the other woman returns, wooden crate containing first aid supplies bundled under one arm and a water-filled bowl with another.

"Let me see it," Juliet says, holding out a pink-fingernailed hand.

Claudia shakes her head, reaching for the crate to find the bandages she knows must be in there. "Just a little scratch. Stick a bandaid on it and it'll be fine." Okay, so maybe the little scratch is bleeding a bit too much to just be a little scratch, but she's not some little kid who can't take care of herself.

Juliet rolls her eyes. "Come on, Claudia. You really sliced your hand open. You'll probably need stitches, and that's not something you can do on your own."

"I have before," she says without thinking.

"Agent Nielsen sent me to find you, and there's no way I'm returning his wife to him in less-than-perfect condition. I don't think he likes me very much, and that definitely wouldn't help. Now give me your hand."

Claudia sighs dramatically at the no-nonsense tone, silently extending her injured hand.

Juliet purses her lips together, either hiding or playing at hiding a pleased smile. The woman's moods are more of a mystery than Mrs. Frederic's were at first, before she decided that Mrs. Frederic only had one mood. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" she asks, and Claudia decides it'd be a good time to divert the conversation away from herself.

"You know you can call him Artie, right? I mean, _everyone_ calls him Artie."

"This might sting a bit," Juliet warns as she pulls a wet cloth from the bowl and presses it to the cut. "I call him Agent Nielsen because he's my superior, just like Agents Bering and Lattimer are. It'd be improper."

Claudia snorts. "The warehouse isn't the army. No real superiors here except Mrs. F and, well." She doesn't finish her sentence, letting the thought linger unsaid between them.

Juliet just continues trying to clean the engine gunk from the cut and after another few moments of loud silence, Claudia can't take it anymore and talks just to fill the empty air. "Come on, you have no problem calling me 'Claudia', or Joshua 'Joshua' or... you know, I don't even know the Bodyguard's name."

"Andy," Juliet says, rinsing the cloth in the bowl again and Claudia is really glad she isn't squeamish because wow that's a lot of blood.

"Andy. Huh." Silence again. She lifts her gaze from where it rested on the bowl to Juliet's face to see the other woman watching her with concern. "What? I know, it's lame working with him and not knowing his name."

"Not that. This is a lot more blood than there should be. It's not clotting."

Before Claudia can open her mouth to tell her not to worry, the world around them disappears into a grey fog.

Artie is going to kill her.

--

Three-quarters of an hour later and the bleeding still hasn't stopped. It's slowed enough that she's pretty sure she's in no danger of bleeding out, but she already sacrificed her sweater to try and staunch it and she's not looking forward to losing her long-sleeved shirt, too. If she _does_ die of blood loss, doing it wearing only a bright pink tank top and grease-covered jeans on the Warehouse balcony isn't exactly how she wants to be remembered.

The grey fog isn't going away either, and both she and Juliet are more than a little concerned. They seem to have freedom of movement, but neither of them can interact with anything they weren't touching when everything faded, but they can hear the Farnsworth buzzing in the office. Artie is _so_ going to kill her.

"What sort of engine was that you smashed your hand on, anyway?" Juliet asks to make conversation, and Claudia could kick herself for being so stupid.

"I knew it!" she says, tying her sweater securely around her hand so she doesn't need to hold it as she pushes herself out of her chair to pace. "I knew my luck sucks. Of course I stupidly hurt myself on an artifact with an effect that persists beyond contact! I am such a _moron_."

The engine hasn't once disappeared since they left the real Warehouse and entered this emptiness and suddenly it hits her.

"I am _such_ a moron!" she says again for good measure. Bending down to pick up a screwdriver, she curses as her fingers slip right through it. In the process the sweater around her injury falls off and she's pleased to note she's not bleeding anymore.

"Care to fill me in?" Juliet asks from right behind her and Claudia startles, standing up and unthinkingly grabbing a protrusion on the nearby engine to steady herself. Just as the Warehouse blinks back to them in full color she thinks she sees something blue moving down in the aisles.

Then Artie and Myka and Andy are surrounding them and there really isn't time to bring it up.

--

"It's gotta be the blood," she explains for the third time an hour later, sitting at the table in the Bed and Breakfast with a small mountain of reports she needs to fill out. Joshua and Pete have joined them this time, and she knows they all need to be on the same page but this is leading to the same sort of boredom that got her into this mess to begin with.

"That makes no sense," Myka says, also for the third time, leaning back in her chair and delicately cradling her mug of hot chocolate in her hands on the edge of the table. "How can it be because of the bleeding and still effect Juliet, too? There's nothing about this in the initial report."

They're crowded, seven knights of the particularly small round table, so it's not that much of a surprise that she narrowly misses Myka's face when she throws her hands up in frustration. The hot chocolate spills forward, and in the process of scooping the half-filled forms out of the way Claudia slices her finger open.

The room flickers into grey, everyone except for Juliet disappearing. She hisses and sucks on the paper cut, mumbling a curse around her finger. When she pulls her hand away it's stopped bleeding and the others fizzle back into life again.

"Okay," Myka rescinds, "it might be the bleeding."

"Blood, I said blood, not bleeding." Claudia narrowly resists throwing her hands up again. "If It was just the bleeding, Juliet wouldn't be pulling a vanishing act with me. but she got my blood on her hands, so she's being yanked around with me. Which I'm sorry for, by the way."

Juliet shrugs. "Hey, you told me not to. Any blame for my involvement in this rests on me."

"What I don't get," Pete says, tipping his chair backwards and settling his hands in his lap, "is how this engine is doing it in the first place." After a look from Artie he backpedals: "Okay, okay, not _how_ but why."

"Amelia Earhart's plane had two engines," Artie says. "The wreckage was recovered from the bottom of the ocean in the mid-40s and sent to the Warehouse. Whenever the engines were father apart than they were on the original aircraft they would flicker in and out of the visible light spectrum. The left engine disappeared from the Warehouse in '87, and this one has been unstable since."

"That still doesn't explain the blood thing," Myka says, leaning back so Andy can reach in front of her with a rag and wiping up the spilled hot chocolate.

Artie scowls at her, moving his torso so that the full effect isn't obstructed by the hulking bodyguard. "I was _getting to that_." He pulls his glasses off his face and punches the bridge of his nose.

Claudia resists the urge to reach across the table and grab his free hand to try and comfort him. That would earn her, and him, more of the puzzled, accusatory glances from the agents, so instead she grabs her pen concentrates on filling in the stack of Artifact Disturbance reports. Her hand is wrapped beneath layers of bandages, so it's easier said than done.

--

One and a half hours, and three more paper cuts later she's done with the last triplicate and Claudia is now on her way to Artie's house, which is new and strange because she's never been there before. She knew that Artie hadn't lived at the Bed and Breakfast in more years than she's been alive, but knowing he had a house of his own and going there to live with him are two very, very different things.

"It took a few days to get everything out of storage and a few more to get it looking like it did before they boxed everything up," he explains to her to fill the silence on the long drive. She sighs.

"Cut the professor act, Artie, we're alone. No Pete and Myka and Joshua to hide from here."

His sigh is longer than hers, and he moves a hand from the steering wheel to run his fingers through his curls. "Joshua was panicked," he eventually says. "When you vanished. We couldn't find you anywhere, and it was nearly an hour, and the look on his face."

She turns sideways in her seat, folding her legs beneath her, and reaches to place a hand on his face. She can't turn his head to make him look at her, but the act of touching him makes her feel better and she knows from experience that it helps him, too.

"Artie," she says, stroking a thumb across his cheek, "Artie, it's okay if you were worried, too. I would have been, if it were you that disappeared." She doesn't add that she really had been worried, and if she was being honest with herself she still was. What would happen if she started bleeding in public, or there was an accident and she needed medical attention?

He shakes his head, gently so as not to disturb her hand, eyes not leaving the road. "It was a lot like Joshua and the compass. Too much like. There was an artifact, and you disappeared, and I was-- we were iall/i left there wondering if we'd ever see you again."

"I'm here now," she says, and feels the edge of his smile beneath her palm.

The house isn't anything like she had expected. It's old, with an exterior similar to Leena's, but the interior is sparse and utilitarian, lacking the softness of the Bed and Breakfast had. She glances around the undecorated living room, then to Artie, and he shrugs.

"Never spent much time here," he says as if the lack of furnishings is the result and not the reason.

After he's showed her around and she's proven to him that she's not going to vanish forever on him, Claudia locks herself in the bathroom for close to two hours. When she emerges, she's removed most of the engine grease from places she never thought engine grease could go and her hair is red again. She went back to the shorter style a few months ago, but hadn't dyed it since entering Warehouse-sponsored witness protection, and her natural brown had taken over.

She finds Artie in the kitchen, pacing in front of an oven that no doubt has cookies in it, and sets a first aid kit on the counter. "Knock knock," she says, and laughs when he startles.

"Three years," he says, "Three years of my telling you not to do that and you do it anyway."

"Lighten up, Artimus, and help me bandage this. It was hard enough dying a streak into my hair with my left hand."

He smiles softly, irritation mostly forgotten, and takes a step forward so he can capture a few strands in his fingers. "Blue?" he asks, glancing at the streak.

She starts to smile, but the word reminds her of something and suddenly what she was in the Warehouse earlier makes sense. "Artie, I think I know how artifacts are still disappearing. I think MacPherson has the other engine, and he can control it somehow."


End file.
